My last. Never. Goodbye.

I’m gonna have to shake off these island ways. I’m gonna have to shed this skin and put my layers back on. This behaviour, this version of me will not survive in London. I’ll have to revert back to another, one who doesn’t smile at strangers on the street. This behaviour will get me arrested in London, or stabbed.

I walked to the beach the other day. A long walk, just under an hour on the main road between the town and the port, that’s empty now again that it’s October. Through the mountains and the fields, along the valley of the still-dry stream, a walk lined with the sage bushes that I’ve watched turn silver grey and duller grey and brittle and summer-dusty, and then gradually greener, greener and succulent and abundant, their scent permeating my winter walks, and then again, slowly, draining of colour and wilting back into summer, over the five seasons that I’ve spent here. I walked to the beach: a long walk, my last.

Two cars stopped to offer me a lift on the way there. The bus swerved round a corner and tooted its horn to say hello; a taxi, too. The local madman zoomed past on his scooter, wearing a Captain’s hat and carrying a shepherd’s crook; he waved it in greeting, and I raised my hand in response. Just as the sea came into view, my friend Polyna drove by. I did a little dance for her, in the middle of the road, as she disappeared around the bend. She was probably laughing. This road, this walk, sometimes it’s like a party where you know everyone, and everyone’s happy to see you. At other times, it’s just me, and the mountains, and the sage, and the bay shimmering deep blue in the distance. When it’s quiet, when there are no cars coming from either direction, I sing out loud. You can hear a car coming a mile off: it’s that quiet.

Except for the music in my ears. I can’t hear the cars coming then. And a thought came, unbidden, as I walked: what it would feel like to be hit by a car. I felt the impact, as the car crashed into me from behind while I sang out loud, oblivious, with music in my ears; I saw my body thrown up in the air before slamming back down, broken and empty, half-on and half-off the road. I lived it, for a moment, my breaking, my death, and then I came back to life because I’m not ready. The pull of gravity is still too strong; I’m still tethered to this earth, and I have places to go. I stepped a little closer to the safety rail, with a backward glance for oncoming cars, and said thank you for my solid bones and the solid ground I walk on; thank you for the glimpse into non-being. Thank you, but I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready to leave this body or this life, but I’m ready, now, to leave this island. And I’m going to London. I’m going back home. I’ll just have to shed this skin, to leave these island ways behind. It is a death, of sorts.

This island. This place that smells of manure and chickpea stew and jasmine flowers, of sage and wood fires and the sea. Where crazy men set fields alight when the wind blows from a particular direction, where children and stooped old ladies and gnarly octogenarians on donkeys and labourers and girls in the latest Nike trainers stop you on the street to say hello, and where we all stop what we’re doing at dusk and turn our eyes west where the sky glows pink. This place that switches on you without any notice, that pounds on you with horizontal rain and scares you with thunder from your sleep and raises winds that carry your furniture away, and then sends the sun to cut through all your gloom and scents your skin with summer, no matter what the season. This place that tests you, relentlessly, and rewards you in ways you could not have imagined. This place that has been home for five seasons. How do I leave this place? How do I say goodbye? I don’t know how. But do we ever know how to leave?

It’s a human weakness, this desire for drama. It’s a human trait. My last, we say. And never. And goodbye. And we forget about the opposites, deliberately or by the accident of fear, the opposites that are contained within every concept, together making up the whole. We forget about first and always and hello; that there is always another season after a season. That the sage will wilt and bloom, just like our smiles. That leaving is just coming, in another direction.

I don’t listen to music when I walk the streets of London. I don’t sing out loud. I walk to destinations and the Thames never shimmers blue. You can buy sage in a shop but you’re not allowed to set things on fire. If there’s a party going on, none of us have been invited, and our smiles are as tight as the scarves around our necks. But England is an island, too, and some of my ways will carry over. And I will shed this skin, but I will grow another, and there is no amount of layers that can disguise who I am. It’s a human trait, this ability to adapt. It’s a human strength. We might forget, but it’s coded into our genes. So I’ll walk those streets in my London layers, but I’ll smile my island smile. Maybe, instead of getting me stabbed, it could loosen up a few smiles around me: that’ll be a first. Hello.

I don’t know how to leave, but it doesn’t matter: I’m not leaving. I’m coming home. I’m ready, now, to come home. It’s the opposite of death. It’s just life.